Berlin's best sights and attractions

Make the most of your Berlin days out from the best sights down to the Currywurst Museum

Unmissable in scale and impact, Berlin's great sights are scattered over the city, conjuring up inspiring views and deep-felt stories. You can pack a lot in on a weekend visit to Berlin, a whistle-stop city tour the first steps into its intense and complex past

For many Berliners the events of the 20th century are within living memory and the city's architecture is saturated with historical significance; every nook or grand vista has its ghosts and stories, adding to the city's unique atmosphere. There are a number of different historical nexus points: Unter den Linden and the glorious Brandenburger Tor speaking of the city's Prussian heritage, shades of its brutal Nazi years found throughout, the Topography of Terror a chilling reminder and the East Side Gallery, a colourful tribute to a once divided city. Berlin has over 200 museums, from world-class collections of Classical art at the beautifully restored Neues Museum, to the striking Liebeskind-designed Jewish Museum and plenty more irreverent affairs, even the humble Currywurst has its own museum! Berlin's sights take many forms, and whether famous landmarks, functioning offices, postmodern memorials or epic museums, they are all part of the life of the place.

Designed by Werner March, the Olympiastadion is a testimony to the ideals of fascist architecture. At the end of a straight stretch of road running directly from Brandenburger Tor through Tuergarten and on, this is a graceful oval structure in pale stone, rich with

From Potsdamer Platz, it is a short walk to the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas (Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe). This field of concrete slabs takes up the entire area of a city block, arranged in rows but rising to various heights on uneven ground

The Berlin Wall, put up in a single night in 1961, introduced a new and cruel reality: anyone trying to flee to the West risked being shot. The concrete part of the 160-kilometre Berlin Wall ran to 112 kilometres, of which the East Side Gallery is a 1.3-kilometre-long

The Federal German Parliament was welcomed back from Bonn in 1999 with a new glass dome, a potent symbol of political aspiration, designed by British ‘starchitect’ Norman Foster. The Reichstag was built in 1894 to house the united German parliament; the terrible

The rebuilding of the east in the 1960s happened along totalitarian lines – and rising up out of Alexanderplatz, the 368 metre-high Fernsehturm (‘Television Tower’) marked the centre of a new capital. As the fourth highest freestanding structure in Europe, on a

A counterpoint to the gritty end of Berlin’s gallery scene, the Hamburger Bahnhof, a former railway station, is a spectacular repository of contemporary art, featuring some of the biggest names from the latter part of the 20th century. 100,000 square metres are

The Jüdisches Museum (Jewish Museum) in Kreuzberg offers an immersive experience of Jewish history, culture and belief, with thanks to the architecture of the museum building. Controversial architect Daniel Libeskind’s vast structure aims to evoke the confusion and

Finally reopened in 2009 after extensive remodelling by the British architect David Chipperfield, this stunning building now houses the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection, the Museum of Prehistory and Early History and various artefacts from the Collection of

Designed in the 1960s by Mies van der Rohe, the New National Gallery houses German and international paintings from the 20th century. It's strong on Expressionism: there are key works by Kirchner, Heckel and Schmidt-Rottluff, as well as pieces by lesser-known

One of the world's major archaeological museums, the Pergamon should not be missed. Its treasures, comprising some of the Antikensammlung (Collection of Classical Antiquities; the rest is in the Altes Museum) and the Vorderasiastisches Museum (Museum of Near Eastern

Ask five German film enthusiasts about the state of contemporary German cinema and be prepared for five different responses. Local buffs agree, however, that the Deutsche Kinemathek gives a consistent account of the story of German cinema. Thirteen rooms contain over

Topographie des Terrors or the Topography of Terror, provides a frank account of the Nazis’ Secret State Police Office, which occupied the site next to the Martin Gropius Bau in central Mitte between 1933 and 1945. The subterranean museum is itself located in the

Albert Speer’s influence on the city may be hard to muffle in the expanse of Tempelhof, but amidst the woods of the Grunewald forest, another Speer creation remains silenced underneath a pile of rubble. The “devil’s mountain” of Teufelsberg was created due to

With its commanding vantage point over Unter den Linden, the Brandenburger Tor provides a spectacular gateway to Berlin and its history. The classical arch was constructed in 1791 to celebrate the city’s status as Prussia’s capital and although initially known as

The park is a legacy of King Frederick the Great, who was attracted to the area by its fine views. He initially had terraced gardens built here before adding a palace. Sans souci means ‘without worries’ and reflects the king’s desire for a sanctuary where he

This Soviet memorial (one of three) and military cemetery lies quietly in the wings of Berlin’s beautiful eastern Treptower Park. Architect Yakov Belopolsky’s design was unveiled just four years after World War II ended, on 8 May 1949, and its epic scale and brawny

The crown of the teeming ‘Ku’damm’ shopping boulevard, an artery through the former West, this church is a funny-peculiar landmark: its nickname, the ‘Broken Tooth’, is pointed. First built in 1895 as a memorial to Kaiser Wilhelm I of Prussia, whose troops